"Noldor (meaning Those with knowledge) are those Elves who initially followed Finwë as their King."

Actually, according to Cuivienyarna (in War of the Jewels), the Three Kindreds were already formed before Finwe, Elwe and Ingwe went with Orome to Valinor. They became the leaders of the kindreds only after they returned to Cuivienen. The first leaders of the three Elven tribes were Imin, Tata and Enel (which are actually not real names, just numbers). This makes sense, as, for example, Elwe and Olwe must have been born to be brothers.

The Noldor are those Eldar of Tatarin stock. In Quendi and Eldar, a very late work by Tolkien, Eöl the Dark Elf for example is made into an Avar of Tatarin descent: he is thus of the same proto-people as the Noldor.

Finwë was indeed the leader of the Tatari during the March, but he cannot be the same Elf as "Tata" (Two). — Jor (Darkelf) 20:25, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

i have some related questions:

• This article apparently decides to use the later spelling Ñoldo throughout. Why is this is not the case elsewhere?
• Why is this article not at Ñoldor?
• Ñoldo, Argon etc. — what is the policy on using post-LOTR material here?

Thanks Anárion 19:41, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We generally use later texts as canon rather than the published Silmarillion. The spelling Noldor, however, is used in various articles throughout Wikipedia... If we were to change it, to be consistent we would have to change it in all of them. Ausir 20:35, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)~

I'd like to see chapter and verse evidence for the tilde in Ñoldor - didn't see any such after studying a bit. If it only appears in a draft or something, then we should stick with the tilde-less version, and discuss in this article, rather than change it everywhere, which misrepresents which is the common form. Stan 19:35, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Quickrefs:

• Morgoth's Ring, Section 4, Note 2: "The name Noldor is here written with a tilde, Ñoldor (representing the back nasal, the ng of king; see IV.174). This becomes the normal frm in all my father's late writings (…)". The references is to a discussion of the word golodh as the Sindarin form of Quenya ñoldo, from Common Eldarin ngolodō.
• idem, Atrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth — Glossary;
• Part two of The Peoples of Middle-earth: as far as I can check all references to Ñoldo/r include the tilde.

I do not have access to the early parts of the HoMe at the moment, but I recall many more references. The tilde was introduced in the rewritings following publication of the LotR and followed whenever Tolkien had access to a typewrite with tilde (or wrote by hand) after. Anárion 20:04, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The canon policy referred to below says that TH and LotR are canon, and S is canon except where "corrected" (i.e. where CJRT messed up?) in HoM-e, but that changes in later writings are not usually counted as canon. This argues in favor of no tilde. Moreover, as I have said elsewhere (and been directed here), the vast majority of readers will never see Ñoldor in any text by Tolkien they ever read. And since they'll know ñ from Spanish, they'll almost certainly pronounce it wrongly anyway. JulianBradfield 10:30, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Most readers (and probably the overwhelming majority of casual readers) are going to mispronounce names from Tolkien's works anyway, no matter what we do. (Not that this is a good argument either way, but it's worth remembering.)

The ng pronunciation is actually quite early. I don't know how it got to n and then back to ng (written ñ), but Etymologies has quite a few N entries listed as Ñ—ñoldor actually comes from the stemp ÑGOLOD- (the ÑG apparently represents a distinctive symbol). This is very definitely pre-LotR work. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 23:57, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think you're perhaps confused about various meanings of early. Let's use Iearly/Ilate for "early/late Internally to the history of Middle-early", and Eearly/Elate for "Externally early/late in Tolkien's life/development of the mythology". It was Ealways the case that the word Noldo derived from an Iearly (Proto-Eldarin) form in ÑG, i.e. back velar pre-nasalized stop. It was also Ealways the case that by the Itime Q(u)enya was a separate language, Iearly in the First Age, the ÑG- had become ñ, hence ñoldo. Now, at the Etime that Tolkien wrote LotR, it was his view that in the Itime of the Third Age, initial ñ in Quenya had become n in pronunciation: hence he wrote noldo in LotR. (Although probably still at that Itime, noldo would actually be written with the tengwa noldo, not númen.) It is not clear that he ever changed his mind on this: most of the later writings in which Ñoldo appears concern First Age events, in which the change ñ -> n had not yet taken place. It is at least defensible, then, that if we take LoTR Itime as the canonical point of reference, Noldo is and Ealways was the correct form. JulianBradfield 17:47, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Canon policy

As for our canon policy, see: Talk:Middle-earth. Ausir 21:31, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Or rather the new article Middle-earth canon. Anárion 20:34, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)